ICT news

• Don't Look Now, but GM's EV Sales Are on Fire

  02-11-2024 23:53 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  GM's president of global markets says their EV portfolio "is growing faster than the market," according to Investopedia, "because we have an all-electric vehicle for just about everybody, no matter what they like to drive."
  The headline at Barrons? "Don't Look Now, but GM's EV Sales Are on Fire."GM delivered almost 32,000 all-electric vehicles in the third quarter — a record — and up about 58% from a year earlier. The more affordable Chevy Equinox, which starts at about $35,000 befor
  
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• Is AI-Driven 0-Day Detection Here?

  02-11-2024 22:52 via it.slashdot.org
  
  "AI-driven 0-day detection is here," argues a new blog post from ZeroPath, makers of a GitHub app that "detects, verifies, and issues pull requests for security vulnerabilities in your code."
  They write that AI-assisted security research "has been quietly advancing" since early 2023, when researchers at the DARPA and ARPA-H's Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge demonstrated the first practical applications of LLM-powered vulnerability detection — with new advances continuing. "Since Ju
  
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• A Fourth FTX Executive Sentenced: Forfeits $11 Billion, But No Prison Time

  02-11-2024 21:44 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Former FTX executive Nishad Singh was ordered to forfeit $11 billion, reports CNBC — and is subject to three years of supervised release, making him "the fourth ex-employee of the collapsed crypto exchange to be punished."
  But while he'd faced a maximum sentence of 75 years, he'll serve no time, according to this report from the Associated Press:Singh, the company's former engineering director, was sentenced in Manhattan by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who said his cooperation was "remarkable."
  
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• US Government Considers Legal Action Over Meta's Use of Financial Data for Ads

  02-11-2024 20:42 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  The Washington Post reports that America's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) "is considering legal action against Meta over allegations that it improperly used financial data obtained from third parties in its highly-lucrative advertising business..."
  The article says a Meta securities filing Thursday revealed it had received a formal notification about the federal investigation last month.The filing said only that the inquiry relates to "advertising for financial products and servi
  
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• As Data Centers for AI Strain the Power Grid, Bills Rise for Everyday Customers

  02-11-2024 19:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  While Amazon, Google, and other companies build new data centers — sometimes for their AI projects — parts of America "are facing higher electric bills," reports the Washington Post:The facilities' extraordinary demand for electricity to power and cool computers inside can drive up the price local utilities pay for energy and require significant improvements to electric grid transmission systems. As a result, costs have already begun going up for customers — or are about to in
  
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• NVIDIA Replaces Rival Chipmaker Intel on the Dow Jones Industrial Average

  02-11-2024 18:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  In 1896 the Dow Jones Industrial Average (or DJIA) was created as a kind of proxy indicator for the wider stock market. "A stock is typically added only if the company has an excellent reputation, demonstrates sustained growth and is of interest to a large number of investors," according to a source cited by Yahoo Finance. Its mix of stocks might be informally considered a sign of the times, since it's made up of 30 stocks that according to Wikipedia have been changed only 57 times over the last
  
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• PimEyes 'Made a Public Rolodex of Our Faces'. Should You Opt Out?

  02-11-2024 17:34 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The free face-image search engine PimEyes "scans through billions of images from the internet and finds matches of your photo that could have appeared in a church bulletin or a wedding photographer's website," -us/news/technology/they-made-a-public-rolodex-of-our-faces-here-s-how-i-tried-to-get-out/ar-AA1tlpPuwrites a Washington Post columnist.
  So to find and delete themselves from "the PimEyes searchable Rolodex of faces," they "recently handed over a selfie and a digital copy of my driver's li
  
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• How America's Export Controls Failed to Keep Cutting-Edge AI Chips from China's Huawei

  02-11-2024 16:34 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
  A few weeks ago, analysts at a specialized technological lab put a microchip from China under a powerful microscope. Something didn't look right... The microscopic proof was there that a chunk of the electronic components from Chinese high-tech champion Huawei Technologies had been produced by the world's most advanced chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
  That was a problem because two U.S. administrations in succ
  
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• Threads Soars to 275 Million Monthly Users, Says Zuckerberg

  02-11-2024 15:34 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from CNBC:
  Threads now has nearly 275 million monthly users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday. "We continue to be on track towards this becoming our next major social app," Zuckerberg said on a call with analysts, adding that he was "quite pleased" with the trajectory of the app.
  The latest numbers indicate Threads is up 175% from a year ago when it reached 100 million users... The app is now signing up more than 1 million users per day, Zuckerbe
  
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• US Lawmakers On EPA To Ban Pesticide Linked To Parkinson's Disease

  02-11-2024 14:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 50 US lawmakers are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to join dozens of other countries in banning a widely used weedkiller linked to Parkinson's disease and other health dangers. In a October 31 letter (PDF) to the agency, seven US senators said that paraquat, a weedkiller commonly applied on US farms, was a "highly toxic pesticide whose continued use cannot be justified given its harms to farmworkers and rural
  
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• Starlink Enters National Radio Quiet Zone

  02-11-2024 11:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Starlink has launched home Internet service to 99.5% of residents in the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) after a multi-year collaboration with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory to minimize interference with radio telescopes. "The vast majority of people within the areas of Virginia and West Virginia collectively known as the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) can now receive high speed satellite Internet service," the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank Observatory announce
  
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• Prosecutors Probe Hedge Fund Titan's Thriller For Clues in Argentina Hack Case

  02-11-2024 08:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Jay Newman, who made billions for Elliott Management pursuing Argentina's defaulted debt, wrote a 2022 thriller about corrupt spies and hedge funds. Now federal prosecutors are examining parallels between his novel "Undermoney" and real-world events.
  The investigation centers on Amit Forlit, an Israeli private investigator facing U.S. extradition charges for alleged email theft from Argentine officials during Elliott's sovereign debt battle. Prosecutors are probing whether Forlit's alleged $20 m
  
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• Inventory Counts Air Pollution Cost of Space Launches and Re-Entries

  02-11-2024 04:30 via news.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A new global inventory has catalogued air pollution from space activities from 2020 to 2022. The inventory includes time, position and pollution from 446 launchers as they ascended and the tracks of re-entries as objects are heated to extreme temperatures and break up or burn up in the upper atmosphere. It catalogues the pollution from 63,000 tons of rocket propellants used in 2022 and from 3,622 objects, including rocket parts and satellite
  
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• Okta Fixes Login Bypass Flaw Tied To Lengthy Usernames

  02-11-2024 02:31 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Identity management firm Okta said Friday it has patched a critical authentication bypass vulnerability that affected customers using usernames longer than 52 characters in its AD/LDAP delegated authentication service.
  The flaw, introduced on July 23 and fixed October 30, allowed attackers to authenticate using only a username if they had access to a previously cached key. The bug stemmed from Okta's use of the Bcrypt algorithm to generate cache keys from combined user credentials. The company s
  
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• California Inks Sustainable Aviation Fuel Deal With Major Airlines

  02-11-2024 01:50 via news.slashdot.org
  
  California signed an agreement with major airlines to increase the use of sustainable aviation fuels, aiming to reach 200 million gallons by 2035 or about 40% of the state's air travel demand. The Hill reports: The California Air Resources Board (CARB) and Airlines for America (A4A) -- an industry trade group representing almost a dozen airlines -- pledged to increase the availability of sustainable aviation fuels statewide. Sustainable aviation fuels -- lower-carbon alternatives to petroleum-ba
  
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• Waymo Explores Using Google's Gemini To Train Its Robotaxis

  02-11-2024 01:10 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Waymo is advancing autonomous driving with a new training model for its robotaxis built on Google's multimodal large language model (MLLM) Gemini. The Verge reports: Waymo released a new research paper today that introduces an "End-to-End Multimodal Model for Autonomous Driving," also known as EMMA. This new end-to-end training model processes sensor data to generate "future trajectories for autonomous vehicles," helping Waymo's driverless vehicles make decisions about where to go and how to avo
  
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• US Indicts 26-Year-Old Gotbit Founder For Market Manipulation

  02-11-2024 00:30 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  The feds have indicted Aleksei Andriunin, a 26-year-old Russian national and founder of Gotbit, on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit market manipulation. Crypto News reports: According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the indictment alleges that Andriunin and his firm participated in a long-running scheme to artificially boost trading volumes for various cryptocurrency companies, including some based in the United States, to make them appear more popular and increase their trading val
  
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